


High There

by geusejuice



Category: Beetlejuice - All Media Types, Beetlejuice - Perfect/Brown & King
Genre: Recreational Drug Use, commiserating about parental trauma, emotional abuse (discussed), you guys better appreciate the ghost with the most joke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2021-01-29 20:36:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21416311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geusejuice/pseuds/geusejuice
Summary: “You know, for a powerful entity from beyond the veil between life and death, your mother sounds an awful lot like a suburban housewife from Dayton, Ohio.”Delia and Beetlejuice bond. And smoke some weed.
Comments: 19
Kudos: 255





	High There

“You know, when I followed the weed smell up here, I was expecting Lydia.”

Delia looked up at him over her shoulder. She gave him a lazy smile, and did not stand up from where she was slumped against the attic roof.

“I never took you for the type,” Beetlejuice went on, sticking his hands in his pockets and wandering over. Delia snorted a soft laugh.

“Then we _really_ don’t hang out enough,” she said, and took a long, slow drag off her joint. It was expertly rolled, he noticed. This really _was_ normal for her.

“I would have pegged you as a cocaine gal, personally. Cause of all the,” he waved his hands and mimicked her normal excitable smile. The one she gave him in return was rather sardonic. This was probably the most chill he’d ever seen her possess in one sitting, but there was a strange melancholy hanging over her that didn’t seem to be coming from the drug.

“No, I use my neurosis and anxiety for that.” She hesitated, and held the joint out. “Does weed work on ghosts?”

“No,” he said, and took it. “Fortunately, I am not a ghost, so I can do all the drugs I want.”

Beetlejuice settled down beside her and took a deep drag.

“But you call yourself the ‘ghost with the most’,” Delia pointed out. “You say it all the time. You said it this morning when you beat Lydia at MarioKart.”

“Cause ‘demon with the semen’ doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.”

Delia snorted, hard, and started to laugh, a proper stoner laugh, like a donkey with asthma. He grinned, and took a few pulls from the joint while he waited for her to finish reacting to his stellar wit. It took a few minutes, but eventually she giggled herself into silence.

“Seriously though,” he said. “I’ve been living with you guys for months, and I’ve never seen you smoke before.”

“I haven’t had to,” she admitted, taking the joint back. “Charles…keeps me grounded. But tonight I needed something else. I wanted to come up here and get high and look at the sky. Leave behind my mortal shell and become one with the universe.” She tilted her head back and gazed up into the diamond-studded blackness above. The laughter had faded from her eyes, and the strange nostalgic sadness was back.

“Is it working?” Beetlejuice asked, trying to keep things upbeat. “I wouldn’t mind some universe oneness myself.”

“No,” Delia said, still staring upwards. “These are old wounds, and the stars alone are not enough to silence them.”

Beetlejuice was silent for a moment, rolling the words over in his head.

“Wow,” he said. “You _are _high. Is this about your ex husband again?”

“No,” Delia said. “Older. The oldest wounds. The first ones.”

“I’m gonna need you to be a _touch _less poetic,” Beetlejuice said, starting to get annoyed. Stoners were only interesting to other stoners, and he wasn’t there yet. Delia didn’t answer right away. When she did, it was in a soft, far away voice at once very old, and very young.

“You know, for a powerful entity from beyond the veil between life and death, your mother sounds an awful lot like a suburban housewife from Dayton, Ohio.”

Beetlejuice plucked the joint from her fingers and took a long, long drag. He was going to need to be _way _less sober for this conversation. If he was even going to have the conversation. He could just leave. She’d understand. Clearly, she understood better than anyone else in this house.

He let the smoke out in one swift breath. As he passed the joint back to her, something made him say “You too, huh?”

“Mm.”

“Jesus.”

“The second she said your name, I knew. I could feel it in my bones.” She brought her gaze down from the heavens, her wide eyes sad and tired. “I was so scared for you. I wanted to do something. I wanted to help you. I kept thinking, you’re not a child anymore, Delia, she’s not even your mother! And I just…couldn’t. I couldn’t move.”

“If it makes you feel better, she could and probably would have ripped you in half, grown up or not.”

“Still,” Delia said. The staring was starting to make him uncomfortable. She was looking straight through him, into the dark places very few people knew were even there. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? No matter how old you are, no matter how far away you get, they can make you feel so small. They can bring it all down so fast.”

Beetlejuice shut his eyes. He tried not to think about the way his name in her voice had sliced through him like ice, had shredded the murky new-dead haze in seconds and yes, made him feel so, so small, and frightened, and alone.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, and abruptly took the blunt from her hand.

“Sorry.”

They sat in silence for a little longer. The weed started to kick in, and he felt himself relax, his anger dissipating. His mother was gone, for good, and everything that had hurt about her was nothing but a memory.

“Is yours still alive?” he asked. Delia shrugged.

“Don’t know. I haven’t spoken to her since I was…twenty five, I think. “

“And how long ago was that?” he asked, and snickered when she half-jokingly slapped at his arm.

“Dick,” she said. Then, “I left home for college, and never looked back. Every now and again she’d try and worm her way back into my life, but I managed to keep her out. The last time was when I got engaged to my first husband. She was calling from all these different numbers, sending me emails, saying how much she missed me, and she loved me and how it hurt so much that she had to find out about the engagement from my cousin.”

Beetlejuice grimaced, his lips curling back against his teeth as bitter memory leeched into his voice.

“I fuckin hate that one. I _hate _when they pretend to love you.” He fell for it every time. _Every _time, no matter how many times she did it, he’d take the bait like a fucking idiot. And she knew it, too. Oh yes. She knew.

Had known.

He shook the thoughts clear, like cobwebs. “What did you do?”

“I told her I didn’t want her at my wedding, and if she showed up I’d call the police. ‘_Deeelia, I’m your mother, don’t you love me, Deliaaaa?’_” Her voice was squeaky wail, like Minnie Mouse at a funeral, and he snickered. “_’Are you trying to kill me, Delia? I’m going to die of a broken heart!”_

“What did you say?” he asked. She gave him a crooked, self-satisfied grin, and plucked the joint from his fingers.

_ “_I said, Mom, that’d be the best wedding present you could ever give me.”

He burst out laughing and she followed, and soon both of them were leaning against each other in helpless hysterics. Beetlejuice slung an arm around Delia’s shoulders.

“You know, I don’t think we did too bad for ourselves.” 

“I smell weed.”

Delia jumped and choked on her lungful. Beetlejuice grinned and winked at Lydia, who raised one eyebrow at him and both eyebrows at her stepmother.

“See this is why I like not having to breathe.”

“_Lydia_,” Delia managed to croak. “We, I was just, we were—“

“We’re getting high and talking about our mom-related trauma.”

Lydia’s eyes went wide.

“I’m in,” she said, and dropped down next to Beetlejuice.

Delia frowned at the much-reduced joint in her fingers. Slowly, she said “I feel like…letting a fifteen year old smoke weed with me is irresponsible.”

“Hey, we’re supervising,” Beetlejuice pointed out. “That’s _way _responsible.”

“Yeah,” Lydia agreed. “Wouldn’t you rather I be doing it here with you than out at some party with a bunch of strangers?”

Delia mulled this over for a second.

“Alright,” she said at last. “But if your dad asks, you got it from Beetlejuice.”

“Hey!” 

**Author's Note:**

> beta'd and verified by a REAL stoner (@cyberstevie on tumblr)


End file.
